Chapter XII

It was Mr. Davis, also, who in the New York Herald of April 23, 1922, made public the evidence for the following box score:

“Not long ago a group of ten literary men—editors, critics, readers and writers—were dining together. Discussion arose as to the respective and comparative merits of contemporaneous popular writers. It was decided that each man present should set down upon a slip of paper his first,second and third choices in various specified but widely diversified fields of literary endeavour, and that then the results should be compared. Admirers of Cobb’s work will derive a peculiar satisfaction from the outcome. It was found that as a writer of humour he had won first place; that as an all round reporter he had first place; that as a handler of local colour in the qualified sense of a power of apt, swiftly-done, journalistic description, he had first place. He also had first place as a writer of horror yarns. He won second place as a writer of darkey stories. He tied with Harry Leon Wilson for second place as a writer of light humorous fiction, Tarkington being given first place in this category. As a teller of anecdotes he won by acclamation over all contenders. Altogether his name appeared on eight of the ten lists.”

Cobb lives at Ossining, New York. He describes himself as lazy, but convinces no one. He likes to go fishing. But he has never written any fish stories.

Booksby Irvin S. Cobb

Books

by Irvin S. Cobb

BACK HOMECOBB’S ANATOMYTHE ESCAPE OF MR. TRIMMCOBB’S BILL OF FAREROUGHING IT DE LUXEEUROPE REVISEDPATHS OF GLORYOLD JUDGE PRIESTFIBBLE, D.D.SPEAKING OF OPERATIONSLOCAL COLORSPEAKING OF PRUSSIANSTHOSE TIMES AND THESETHE GLORY OF THE COMINGTHE THUNDERS OF SILENCETHE LIFE OF THE PARTYFROM PLACE TO PLACE“OH, WELL, YOU KNOW HOW WOMEN ARE!”THE ABANDONED FARMERSSUNDRY ACCOUNTSA PLEA FOR OLD CAP COLLIERONE THIRD OFFEATING IN TWO OR THREE LANGUAGESJ. POINDEXTER, COLOREDSTICKFULSPlays:FUNABASHIBUSYBODYBACK HOMESERGEANT BAGBYGUILTY AS CHARGEDUNDER SENTENCE

BACK HOME

COBB’S ANATOMY

THE ESCAPE OF MR. TRIMM

COBB’S BILL OF FARE

ROUGHING IT DE LUXE

EUROPE REVISED

PATHS OF GLORY

OLD JUDGE PRIEST

FIBBLE, D.D.

SPEAKING OF OPERATIONS

LOCAL COLOR

SPEAKING OF PRUSSIANS

THOSE TIMES AND THESE

THE GLORY OF THE COMING

THE THUNDERS OF SILENCE

THE LIFE OF THE PARTY

FROM PLACE TO PLACE

“OH, WELL, YOU KNOW HOW WOMEN ARE!”

THE ABANDONED FARMERS

SUNDRY ACCOUNTS

A PLEA FOR OLD CAP COLLIER

ONE THIRD OFF

EATING IN TWO OR THREE LANGUAGES

J. POINDEXTER, COLORED

STICKFULS

Plays:

FUNABASHI

BUSYBODY

BACK HOME

SERGEANT BAGBY

GUILTY AS CHARGED

UNDER SENTENCE

Sourceson Irvin S. Cobb

Sources

on Irvin S. Cobb

Who’s Who in America.

Who’s Cobb and Why?Booklet published by GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY. (Out of print).

Article by Robert H. Davis in the book section of THE NEW YORK HERALD for April 23, 1922.

Robert H. Davis, 280 Broadway, New York.

Chapter XIIPLACES TO GO

The book by Thomas Burke calledMore Limehouse Nightswas published in England under the title ofWhispering Windows. At the time of its publication, Mr. Burke wrote the following:

“The most disconcerting question that an author can be asked, and often is asked, is: ‘Why did you write that book?’ The questioners do not want an answer to that immediate question; but to the implied question: ‘Why don’t you write some other kind of book?’ To either question there is but one answer:BECAUSE.

“Every writer is thus challenged. The writer of comic stories is asked why he doesn’t write something really serious. The novelist is asked why he doesn’t write short stories, and the short-story writer is asked why he doesn’t write a novel. To me people say, impatiently: ‘Why don’t you write happy stories about ordinary people?’ And the only answer I can give them is: ‘Because I can’t. I present life as I see it.’

“I am an ordinary man, but I don’t understandordinary men. I am at a loss with them. But with the people of whom I write I have a fellow-feeling. I know them and their sorrows and their thwarted strivings and I understand their aberrations. I cannot see the romance of the merchant or the glamour of the duke’s daughter. They do not permit themselves to be seized and driven by passion and imagination. Instead they are driven by fear, which they have misnamed Commonsense. These people thwart themselves, while my people are thwarted by malign circumstance.

“Often I have taken other men to the dire districts about which I write, and they have remained unmoved; they have seen, in their phrase, nothing to get excited about. Well, one cannot help that kind of person. One cannot give understanding to the man who regards the flogging of children as a joke, or to whom a broken love-story is, in low life, a theme for smoking-room anecdotes.

“Wherever there are human creatures there are beauty and courage and sacrifice. The stories inWhispering Windowsdeal with human creatures, thieves, drunkards, prostitutes, each of whom is striving for happiness in his or her way, and missing it, as most of us do. Each has hidden away some fine streak of character, some mark below which he will not go. And—they are alive. They have met life in its ugliest phases, and fought it.

“My answer, then, to the charge of writing ‘loathsome’ stories, is that these things happen. To those who say that cruelty and degradation are not fit subjects for fiction, I say that all twists and phases of the human heart are fit subjects for fiction.

“The entertainment of hundreds of thousands with ‘healthy’ literature is a great and worthy office; but the author can only give out what is in him. If I write of wretched and strange things, it is because these move me most. Happiness needs no understanding; but these darker things—they are kept too much from sensitive eyes and polite ears; and so are too harshly judged upon the world’s report. I am no reformer; I have never ‘studied’ people; and I have no ‘purpose,’ unless it be illumination.

“What we all need today is illumination; for only through full knowledge can we come to truth—and understanding.”

Burke’s new book,The London Spy, is described by the author as “a book of town travels.” Some of the subjects are London street characters, cab shelters, coffee stalls and street entertainers. The range is very wide, for there is a chapter called “In the Streets of Rich Men,” which deals with Pall Mall and Piccadilly, as well as a study of a waterside colony, including the results of afirst pipe of opium (“In the Streets of Cyprus”). Mr. Burke tells a good deal about the film world of Soho and is able to give an intimate sketch of Chaplin. Perhaps the most charming of the titles in the book is the chapter called “In the Street of Beautiful Children.” This is a study of a street in Stepney, with observations on orphanages and reformatories and “their oppressions of the children of the poor.”

Thomas Burke was born in London and seldom lives away from it. He started writing when employed in a mercantile office, and sold his first story when sixteen. He sincerely hopes nobody will ever discover and reprint that story. His early struggles have been recounted in hisNights in London. He married Winifred Wells, a young London poet, author ofThe Three Crowns. He lives at Highgate, on the Northern Heights of London. He hates literary society and social functions generally. His chief recreation is wandering about London.

iii

There is very little use in doing a book about China nowadays unless you can do an unusual book about China; and that, precisely, is what E. G. Kemp has done.Chinese Mettleis an unusual book, even to the shape of it (it is nearly square though not taller than the ordinary book). The author has written enough books on Chinato cover all the usual ground and, as Sao-Ke Alfred Sze of the Chinese Legation at Washington says in his foreword, Miss Kemp “has wisely neglected the ‘show-window’ by putting seaports at the end. By acquainting the public with the wealth and beauty of the interior, she reveals to readers the vitality and potential energy, both natural and cultural, of a great nation.” Three provinces are particularly described—Yünnan, Kweichow, Hunan—and there are good chapters on the new Chinese woman and the youth of China. This book has, in addition to unusual illustrations, what every good book of its sort should have, an index.

In view of the title of this chapter I have hesitated over mentioning here Albert C. White’sThe Irish Free State. Whether Ireland now should be numbered among the places to go or not is possibly a matter of heredity and sympathies; but at any rate, Ireland is unquestionably a place to read about. Shall we agree that the Irish Free State is one of the best places in the world to go in a book? Then Mr. White’s book will furnish up-to-the-minute transportation thither.

The book is written throughout from the standpoint of a vigorous and independent mind. It will annoy extreme partisans of all shades of opinion, and will provoke much discussion. This is especially true of the concluding chapter, in which the author discusses “Some Factors in the Future.” The value of the book is enhanced bythe inclusion of the essential documents of the Home Rule struggle, including the four Home Rule Bills of 1886, 1893, 1914 and 1920, and the terms of the Treaty concluded with Sinn Fein.

Whether Russia is a place to go is another of those debatable questions and I feel that the same conclusion holds good. A book is the wisest passport to Russia at present.Marooned in Moscow, by Marguerite E. Harrison, is not a new book—in the sense of having been published last week. It remains about the best single book published on Russia under the Soviet government; and I say this with the full recollection that H. G. Wells also wrote a book about Soviet Russia after a visit of fifteen days. Mrs. Harrison spent eighteen months and was part of the time in prison. She is an exceptionally good reporter without prejudices for or against any theory of government—with an eye only for the facts and a word only for an observed fact.

It is good news thatThe Secret of the Sahara: Kufara, by Rosita Forbes, is to be published in a new edition. This Englishwoman, with no assistance but that of native guides, penetrated to Kufara, which lies hidden in the heart of the Libyan desert, a section of the Sahara. This is the region of a fanatical sect of Mohammedans known as the Senussi. No other white woman has ever been known to enter the sacred city of Paj, a gloomy citadel hewn out of rock on the edge of a beautiful valley.The Secret of theSaharais illustrated with pictures taken by the author, many times under pain of death if she were detected using a camera.

C. E. Andrews is a college professor who saw war service in France and relief administration work in the Balkans. His gifts as a delightful writer will be apparent now that his book of travels,Old Morocco and the Forbidden Atlas, is out. This book, unlike the conventional travel book, has the qualities of a good story. There is colour and adventure. There are humorous episodes and there are pictures that seem to be mirrored in the clear lake of a lovely prose. The journey described is through a region of Morocco little traversed by white men and over paths of the Atlas Mountains frequented chiefly by wild tribes and banditti.

Of all places to go, old New York remains, for many, the most appealing. Does it sound queer to recommend for those readersA Century of Banking in New York: 1822-1922, by Henry Wysham Lanier? Mr. Lanier is a son of Sidney Lanier, the poet, and those who believe that a chronicle of banking must necessarily be full of dry statistics are invited to read the opening chapter of this book; for Mr. Lanier begins his tale with the yellow fever epidemic of 1822, when all the banks of New York, to say nothing of thethousands of people, fled “from the city to the country”—that is, from lowermost Broadway to the healthful village of Greenwich. This quality of human rather than statistical interest is paramount throughout the book.

I go back almost four years to call attention again to Frederic A. Fenger’sAlone in the Caribbean, a book with maps and illustrations from unusual photographs, the narrative of a cruise in a sailing canoe among the Caribbean Islands.... It is just a good book.

Robin Hood’s Barn, by Margaret Emerson Bailey, should be classified, I suppose, as a volume of essays. It seems to me admirably suited for this chapter, since it is all about a pleasant house inhabited by pleasant people—and surely that is a place where everyone wants to go. Margaret Emerson Bailey is describing, I think, an actual house and actual people; not so much their lives as what they make out of life in the collectivism that family life enforces. At least, I seem to get from her book a unity of meaning, the lack of which in our lives, as we live them daily, makes for helplessness and sometimes for despair.

With even more doubt as to the exact “classification,” I proceed to speak here and now of L. P. Jacks’s book,The Legends of Smokeover. Mr. Jacks is well known as the editor of the HibbertJournal and a writer of distinction upon philosophical subjects. I should say his specialty is an ability to relate philosophical abstractions to practical, everyday existence. Those familiar with his essays in the Atlantic Monthly will know what I mean. And is the Smokeover of his new book, then, a place to go? It is, if you wish to see our modern age and industrial civilisation expressed in such terms—almost in the terms of fiction—as make its appraisal relatively easy.

I suppose this book might make Mr. Jacks memorable as a satirist. It brings philosophy down from the air, like a peaceful thunderbolt, to shatter the vain illusions we entertain of our material success and our civilised strides forward. The fact that when you have begun to read the book you may experience some difficulty in knowing how to take it is in the book’s favour. And why should you complain so long as from the outset you are continuously entertained and amused? You can scarcely complain ... even though at the end, you find you have been instructed. In a world thickly spotted with Smokeovers, Mr. Jacks’s book is a book worth having, worth reading, worth reading again.

Chapter XIIIALIAS RICHARD DEHAN

At that, I think I am wrong. I think the title of this chapter ought to be “Alias Clotilde Graves.”

The problems of literary personality are strange. Some time after the Boer War a woman who had been in newspaper work in London and who had even, at one time, been on the stage under the necessity of earning her living, wrote a novel. The novel happened to be an intensive study of the Boer War, made possible by the fact that the writer was the daughter of a soldier and had spent her early years in barracks. England at that time was interested by the subject of this novel. It sold largely and its author was established by the book.

She was forty-six years old in the year when the book was published. But this was not the striking thing. William De Morgan produced the first of his impressive novels at a much more advanced age. The significant thing was that in publishing her novel,The Dop Doctor(American title:OneBraver Thing), Clotilde Graves chose the pen name of Richard Dehan, although she was already known as a writer (chiefly for the theatre) under her own name.

I do not know that Miss Graves has ever said anything publicly about her motive in electing the name of Richard Dehan. But I feel that whatever the cause the result was the distinct emergence of a totally different personality. There is no final disassociation between Clotilde Graves and Richard Dehan. Richard Dehan, novelist, steadily employs the material furnished in valuable abundance by Clotilde Graves’s life. At the same time the personality of Richard Dehan is so unusual, so gifted, so lavish in its invention and so much at home in surprising backgrounds, that something approaching a psychic explanation of authorship seems called for.

Clotilde Inez Mary Graves was born at Barracks, Buttevant, County Cork, Ireland, on June 3, 1864, third daughter of the late Major W. H. Graves of the Eighteenth Royal Irish Regiment and Antoinette, daughter of Captain George Anthony Deane of Harwich. Thus, the EnglishWho’s Who.

“She numbers among her ancestors admirals and deans,” said The Bookman in 1912.

As the same magazine at about the same time spoke of her as descended from Charles II.’s navalarchitect, Admiral Sir Anthony Deane, one wonders if Sir Anthony were not the sum of the admirals and the total of the deans. But no; at any rate in so far as the admirals are concerned, for Miss Graves is also said to be distantly related to Admiral Nelson.

I will give you what The Bookman said in the “Chronicle and Comment” columns of its number for February, 1913:

“Richard Dehan was nine years old when her family emigrated to England from their Irish home. She had seen a good deal of barrack life, and at Southsea, where they went to live, she acquired a large knowledge of both services in the circle of naval and military friends they made there, and this knowledge years afterward she turned to account inBetween Two Thieves. In 1884, Miss Graves became an art student and worked at the British Museum galleries and the Royal Female School of Art, helping to support herself by journalism of a lesser kind, among other things drawing little pen-and-ink grotesques for the comic papers. By and by she resolved to take to dramatic writing and being too poor, she says, to manage in any other way, she abandoned art and took an engagement in a travelling theatrical company. In 1888 her first chance as a dramatist came. She was again in London, working vigorously at journalism, when some one was needed to write extra lyrics for a pantomime then in preparation. A letter of recommendation froman editor to the manager ended in Miss Clo Graves writing the pantomime ofPuss in Boots. Later a tragedy by her,Nitocris, was produced for an afternoon at Drury Lane, and another of her plays,The Mother of Three, proved not only a literary, but also a material, success.”

Her first novel to be signed Richard Dehan being so successful, an English publisher planned to bring out an earlier, minor work, already published as by Clotilde Graves, with “Richard Dehan” on the title-page. The author was stirred to a vigorous and public protest. In the ensuing controversy someone made the point that the proposed reissue would not be more indefensible than the act of a publishing house in bringing out posthumous “books” by O. Henry and dragging from its deserved oblivion Rudyard Kipling’sAbaft the Funnel.

I do not know whether the publishing of books is a business or a profession. I should say that it has, at one time or another and by one or another individual or concern, been pursued as either or both.

There have certainly been, and probably are, book publishers who not only conduct their business as a business but as a business of a low order. There have been and are book publishers who, though quite necessarily business men, observe an ethical code as nice as that of any of the recognised professions. Perhaps publishing books should qualify as an art, since it has the characteristicsof bringing out what is best or worst in a publisher; and, indeed, if we are to hold that any successful means of self-expression is art, then publishing books has been an art more than once; for unquestionably there are publishers who find self-expression in their work.

This is an interesting subject, but I must not pursue it in this place. Certainly Miss Graves was justified in objecting to the use of her new pen name on work already published under her own name. In her case, as I think, the objection was peculiarly well-founded, because it seems to me that Richard Dehan was a new person. Since Richard Dehan appeared on the title-page ofThe Dop Doctor, there has never been a Clotilde Graves in books. You have only to study the books. TheDop Doctorwas followed, two years later, byBetween Two Thieves. This novel has as a leading character Florence Nightingale under the name of Ada Merling. The story was at first to have been called “The Lady With The Lamp”; but the author delayed it for a year and subjected it to a complete rewriting, the result of a new and enlarged conception of the story.

Then came a steady succession of novels by Richard Dehan. I remember with what surprise I read, in 1918,That Which Hath Wings, a war story of large dimensions and an incredible amount of exact and easy detail. I remember, too, noting that there was embedded in it a marvellous story for children—an airplane flight inwhich a youngster figured—if the publisher chose, with the author’s consent, to lift this out of its larger, adult setting. I remember very vividly reading in 1920 a collection of short stories by Richard Dehan, published under the titleThe Eve of Pascua. Pascua is the Spanish word for Easter. I wondered where on earth, unless in Spain itself, the author got the bright colouring for his story.

What I did not realise at the time was that Richard Dehan is like that. Now, smitten to earth by the 500-page novel which he has just completed, I think I understand better.The Just Steward, from one standpoint, makes the labours of Gustave Flaubert inSalaamboseem trivial. It is known with what passionate tenacity and surprising ardour the French master studied the subject of ancient Carthage, grubbing like the lowliest archseologist to get at his fingertips all those recondite allusions so necessary if he were to move with lightness, assurance and consummate art through the scenes of his novel. But, frankly, one does not expect this of the third daughter of an Irish soldier, an ex-journalist and the author of a Drury Lane pantomime. Nevertheless the erudition is all here. From this standpoint,The Just Stewardis truly monumental. I will show you a sample or two:

“Beautiful, even with the trench and wall of Diocletian’s comparatively recent siege scarring the orchards and vineyards of Lake Mareotis,splendid even though her broken canals and aqueducts had never been repaired, and part of her western quarter still displayed heaps of calcined ruins where had been temples, palaces and academies, Alexandria lay shimmering under the African sun....

“The vintage of Egypt was in full swing, the figs and dates were being harvested. Swarms of wasps and hornets, armed with formidable stings, yellow-striped like the dreaded nomads of the south and eastern frontiers, greedily sucked the sugary juices of the ripe fruit. Flocks of fig-birds twittered amongst the branches, being like the date-pigeons, almost too gorged to fly. Half naked, dark or tawny skinned, tattooed native labourers, hybrids of mingled races, with heads close-shaven save for a topknot, dwellers in mud-hovels, drudges of the water-wheel, cut down the heavy grape-clusters with sickle-shaped cooper knives.

“Ebony, woolly-haired negroes in clean white breech-cloths, piled up the gathered fruit in tall baskets woven of reeds and lined with leaves. Copts with the rich reddish skins, the long eyes and boldly curving profiles of Egyptian warriors and monarchs as presented on the walls of ancient temples of Libya and the Thebaïd, moved about in leather-girdled blue linen tunics and hide sandals, keeping account of the laden panniers, roped upon the backs of diminutive asses and carried to the winepresses as fast as they were filled.

“The negroes sang as they set snares for fig-birds, and stuffed themselves to the throat with grapes and custard-apples. The fat beccaficoes beloved of the epicurean fell by hundreds into the limed horsehair traps. Greek, Egyptian and negro girls, laughing under garlands of hibiscus, periwinkle and tuberoses, coaxed the fat morsels out of the black men to carry home for a supper treat, while acrobats, comic singers, sellers of cakes, drinks and sweetmeats, with strolling jugglers and jesters and Jewish fortune-tellers of both sexes, assailed the workers and the merrymakers with importunities and made harvest in their own way.”

The story is extraordinary. Opening in the Alexandria of the fourth century, it pictures two men, a Roman official and a Jewish steward, who are friends unto death. The second of the four parts or books into which the novel is divided opens in England in 1914. We have to do with John Hazel, the descendant of Hazaël Aben Hazaël, and with the lovely Katharine Forbis, whose ancestor was a Roman, Hazaël Aben Hazaël’s sworn friend.

A story of exciting action certainly; it has elements that would ordinarily be called melodramatic—events which are focussed down into realities against the tremendous background of an incredible war. The exotic settings are Egypt and Palestine. It must not be thought that the story is bizarre; the scenes in England, the Englishslang of John Hazel, as well as the typical figure of Trixie, Lady Wastwood, are utterly modern. I do not find anything to explain how Miss Graves could write such a book; the answer is that Richard Dehan wrote it.

iii

Miss Graves, of whose antecedents and education we already know something, is a Roman Catholic in faith and a Liberal Unionist in politics. She lives at The Towers, Beeding, near Bramber, Sussex. Her recreations are gardening and driving.

But Richard Dehan knows the early history of the Christian Church; he knows military life, strategy, tactics, types; he knows in a most extraordinary way the details of Jewish history and religious observances; he knows perfectly and as a matter of course all about English middle class life; he knows all sorts of things about the East—Turkey and Arabia and those countries.

This is a discrepancy which will bear a good deal of accounting for.

Before I try to account for it I will give you a long passage fromThe Just Steward, describing the visit of Katharine Forbis and her friend to the house of John Hazel, lately of London and now of Alexandria:

“The negro porter who had opened the door, ahuge Ethiopian of ebony blackness, dressed and turbaned in snow-white linen, salaamed deeply to the ladies, displaying as he did so a mouthful of teeth as dazzling in whiteness and sharply-pointed as those of the mosaic dog.

“Then the negro shut the heavy door and locked and bolted it. They heard the car snort and move away as the heavy bolts scrooped in their ancient grooves of stone. But, as they glanced back, towards the entrance, the imperturbable attendant in the black kaftan waved them forward to where another man, exactly like himself in feature, colouring and costume, waited as imperturbably on the threshold of a larger hall beyond. On its right-hand doorpost was affixed a cylinder of metalrepousséewith an oval piece of glass on that something like a human eye. And the big invisible bees went on humming as industriously and as sleepily as ever:

“‘Bz’zz’z!... Bzz’z!... Bzz m’m’m!...’

“Perhaps it was the bees’ thick, sleepy droning that made Miss Forbis feel as though she had previously visited this house in a dream, in which, though the mosaic dog had certainly figured, together with a negro who had opened doors, the rows of shoes along the wall, the little creature tripping at her side, the two dark, ultra-respectable men in black tarbushes and kaftans had had no place or part. Only John Hazel had bulked big. He was there, beyond the grave Semitic face of the second Jewish secretary, on the farther sideof the torrent of boiling amber sunshine pouring through a central opening in the roof of the inner hall that succeeded the vestibule of the mosaic Cerberus. An atrium some forty feet in length, paved with squares of black and yellow marble with an oblong pool in the midst of it, upon whose still crystal surface pink and crimson petals of roses had been strewn in patterns, and in the centre of which a triple-jetted fountain played.

“The humming of the unseen bees came louder than ever, from a doorway in the wall upon Katharine’s right hand, a wall of black polished marble, decorated with an inlaid ornament in porphyry of yellow and red and pale green. The curtain of dyed and threaded reeds did not hide what lay beyond the doorway. You saw a long, high-pitched whitewashed room, cooled by big wooden electric fans working under the ceiling, and traversed by avenues of creamy-white Chinese matting, running between rows of low native desks, before each of which squatted, on naked or cotton-sock-covered heels, or sat cross-legged upon a square native chintz cushion, a coffee-coloured, almond-eyed young Copt, in a black or blue cotton nightgown, topped with the tarbush of black felt or a dingy-white or olive-brown muslin turban, murmuring softly to himself as he made entries, from right to left, in a huge limp-covered ledger, or deftly fingered the balls of coloured clay strung on the wires of the abacus at his side.

“Oh! ... Wonderful! I’m so Glad you Brought me!’

“Lady Wastwood’s emphatic exclamation of pleasure in her surroundings brought cessation in the humming—caused a swivelling of capped or turbanned heads all down the length of three avenues—evoked a simultaneous flash of black Oriental eyes, and white teeth in dusky faces lifted or turned. Then at the upper end of the long counting-house, where three wide glassless windows looked on a sanded palm-garden, and the leather-topped knee-hole tables, roll-top desks, copying ink presses, mahogany revolving-chairs, telephone installations, willow-paper baskets, pewter inkstands and Post Office Directories suggested Cornhill and Cheapside rather than the Orient—one of the olive-faced Jewish head-clerks in kaftans and side-curls coughed—and as though he had pulled a string controlling all the observant faces, every tooth was hidden and every eye discreetly bent on the big limp ledgers again.

“All the Coptic bees were humming sonorously in unison as Katharine went forward to a lofty doorway, framing brightness, where waited to receive her the master of the hive....

“The light beings behind him may have exaggerated his proportions, but he seemed to Trixie the biggest man she had ever seen, and nearly the ugliest. Close-curling coarse black hair capped his high-domed skull, and his stern, powerful, swarthy face, big-nosed and long-chinned, with ahumorous quirk at the corners of the heavy-lipped mouth, that redeemed its sensuousness, was lighted by eyes of the intensest black, burning under heavy beetle-brows. His khaki uniform, though of fine material and admirable cut, was that of a common ranker, and a narrow strip of colours over the heart, and the fact of his left arm being bandaged and slung, intimated to Lady Wastwood that Katharine’s Jewish friend had already served with some degree of distinction, and had been wounded in the War. And drawing back with her characteristic inconquerable shyness, as he advanced to Miss Forbis, plainly unconscious of any presence save hers, Trixie’s observant green eyes saw him bend his towering head, and sweep his right arm out and down with slow Oriental stateliness, bringing back the supple hand to touch breast, lips and brow. Whether or not he had raised the hem of Katharine’s skirt to his lips and kissed it, Lady Wastwood could not definitely determine. She was left with the impression that he had done this thing.”

I should have liked to have given, rather than purely descriptive passages, a slice of the complicated and tense action with which the story brims over, but there is the difficulty that such a scene might not be intelligible to one not having read the story from the beginning. I must resistthe tendency to quote any more, having indulged it already to excess, and I am ready to propound my theory of the existence of Richard Dehan.

If you receive a letter from The Towers, Beeding, it will bear a double signature, like this:

RICHARD DEHAN

CLOTILDE GRAVES

Clotilde Graves has become a secondary personality.

There was once a time when there was no Richard Dehan. There now are times when there is no Clotilde Graves.

To a woman in middle age an opportunity presented itself. It was the chance to write a novel around the subject which, as a girl, she had come to know a great deal about—the subject of war. To write about it and gain attention, the novel required a man’s signature.

Then there was born in the mind of the woman who purposed to write the novel the idea of a man—oftheman—who should be the novelist she wanted to be. He should use as by right and from instinct the material which lay inutile at her woman’s disposal.

She created Richard Dehan. Perhaps, in so doing, she created another monster like Frankenstein’s. I do not know.

Born of necessity and opportunity and a woman’s inventiveness, Richard Dehan took over whatever of Clotilde Graves’s he could use. Heis now the master. It is, intellectually and spiritually, as if he were the full-grown son of Clotilde Graves. It is a partnership not less intimate than that.

Clotilde Graves—but she does not matter. I think she existed to bring Richard Dehan into the world.

Booksby Richard Dehan

Books

by Richard Dehan

Novels:THE LOVER’S BATTLETHE DOP DOCTORBETWEEN TWO THIEVESTHE HEADQUARTER RECRUITTHE COST OF WINGSTHE MAN OF IRONOFF SANDY HOOKEARTH TO EARTHUNDER THE HERMESTHAT WHICH HATH WINGSA SAILOR’S HOMETHE EVE OF PASCUATHE VILLA OF THE PEACOCKTHE JUST STEWARDPlays:NITOCRISDRURY LANE PANTOMIME, PUSS IN BOOTSDR. AND MRS. NEILLA MOTHER OF THREEA MATCHMAKERTHE BISHOP’S EYETHE FOREST LOVERSA MAKER OF COMEDIESTHE BOND OF NIKONA TENEMENT TRAGEDY

Novels:

THE LOVER’S BATTLE

THE DOP DOCTOR

BETWEEN TWO THIEVES

THE HEADQUARTER RECRUIT

THE COST OF WINGS

THE MAN OF IRON

OFF SANDY HOOK

EARTH TO EARTH

UNDER THE HERMES

THAT WHICH HATH WINGS

A SAILOR’S HOME

THE EVE OF PASCUA

THE VILLA OF THE PEACOCK

THE JUST STEWARD

Plays:

NITOCRIS

DRURY LANE PANTOMIME, PUSS IN BOOTS

DR. AND MRS. NEILL

A MOTHER OF THREE

A MATCHMAKER

THE BISHOP’S EYE

THE FOREST LOVERS

A MAKER OF COMEDIES

THE BOND OF NIKON

A TENEMENT TRAGEDY

Sourceson Richard Dehan

Sources

on Richard Dehan

Who’s Who[in England].

THE BOOKMAN for February, 1913 (Volume XXXVI, pp. 595-6), also brief mention in THE BOOKMAN for September and October, 1912.

Private Information.

Chapter XIVWITH FULL DIRECTIONS

I have read the book calledCivilization in the United States, a collection of essays by various Americans, and count the time well spent chiefly because, at the end of the chapter on “Sport,” I came upon these words by Ring W. Lardner:

“The best sporting fiction we know of, practically the only sporting fiction an adult may read without fear of stomach trouble, is contained in the collected works of the late Charles E. Van Loan.”

This is expert testimony, if there is such a thing. The books Mr. Lardner referred to are published in a five-volume memorial edition consisting of:

FORE! GOLF STORIES

SCORE BY INNINGS: BASEBALL STORIES

OLD MAN CURRY: RACETRACK STORIES

TAKING THE COUNT: PRIZE RING STORIES

BUCK PARVIN: STORIES OF THE MOTION PICTURE GAME.

This collected edition was published by George H. Doran Company with the arrangement that every cent above actual cost should go to Mrs. Van Loan and her children.

William T. Tilden, 2nd, was winner of the world’s tennis championship in 1920 and 1921. With W. M. Johnston he was winner of the Davis cup in the same years. He also won the United States championship in those years. His book,The Art of Lawn Tennis, published in 1921, was republished in 1922. The revised edition included chapters on the winning of the Davis cup and on the world’s and the United States championships, on Mrs. Mallory’s play in the women’s world championship games in France and England, and on Mlle. Lenglen’s play in America. Mr. Tilden also added an estimate of the promising youngsters playing tennis and indulged in one or two surprising and radical prophecies.

Twenty Years of Lawn Tennis, by A. Wallis Myers, an English player of distinction, has interesting chapters on play in other countries than America, England and France. An anecdotal volume this, with moments on the Riviera and matches played in South Africa.

After unpreventable delays we have, at last,The Gist of Golfby Harry Vardon. Using remarkable photographs, Vardon devotes a chapter to each club and chapters to stance, grip, and swing. Although the chief value of the book is to the player who wants to improve his game,there is text interesting to everyone familiar with golf; for Vardon gives personal reminiscences covering years of play and illustrative of his instructions.

I suppose the fifty-three photographs, mostly full page ones, are the outstanding feature ofWild Life in the Tree Tops, by Captain C. W. R. Knight. This English book, large and flat, shows with the aid of the camera, the merlin pursuing her quarry, young tawny owls in a disused magpie’s nest, female noctules and their young, the male kestrel brooding, and a male buzzard that has just brought a rabbit to the younglings in the nest. Plenty of other pictures like these! The chapters deal with the buzzards of the Doone country, the lady’s hawk, woodpeckers, brown owls, sparrow-hawks, herons and various other feathered people.

Did you ever readLad: A Dog? Well, anyway, there is a man named Albert Payson Terhune and he and his wife live at a place called “Sunny-bank,” at Pompton Lakes, New Jersey, where they raise prize winning collie dogs. Photographs come from New Jersey showing Mr. and Mrs. Terhune taking afternoon tea, entirely surrounded by magnificently coated collies. You will also find, if you stray into a bookstore this autumn, a book with a jacket drawn by CharlesLivingston Bull—a jacket from which looms a colossal collie. He carries in a firmly knotted shawl or blanket or sheet or something (the knot clenched between his teeth) a new-born babe. New-born or approximately so. The title of this book isFurther Adventures of Lad.

Mr. Terhune writes the best dog stories. Read a little bit from the first chapter ofFurther Adventures of Lad:

“Even the crate which brought the new dog to the Place failed somehow to destroy the illusion of size and fierceness. But the moment the crate door was opened the delusion was wrecked by Lad himself.

“Out on to the porch he walked. The ramshackle crate behind him had a ridiculous air of chrysalis from which some bright thing had departed. For a shaft of sunlight was shimmering athwart the veranda floor. And into the middle of the warm bar of radiance Laddie stepped—and stood.

“His fluffy puppy-coat of wavy mahogany-and-white caught a million sunbeams, reflecting them back in tawny-orange glints and in a dazzle as of snow. His forepaws were absurdly small even for a puppy’s. Above them the ridging of the stocky leg bones gave as clear promise of mighty size and strength as did the amazingly deep little chest and square shoulders.

“Here one day would stand a giant among dogs, powerful as a timber-wolf, lithe as a cat, asdangerous to foes as an angry tiger; a dog without fear or treachery; a dog of uncanny brain and great lovingly loyal heart and, withal, a dancing sense of fun. A dog with a soul.

“All this, any canine physiologist might have read from the compact frame, the proud head carriage, the smoulder in the deep-set sorrowful dark eyes. To the casual observer, he was but a beautiful and appealing and wonderfully cuddleable bunch of puppyhood.

“Lad’s dark eyes swept the porch, the soft swelling green of the lawn. The flash of fire-blue lake among the trees below. Then he deigned to look at the group of humans at one side of him. Gravely, impersonally, he surveyed them; not at all cowed or strange in his new surroundings; courteously inquisitive as to the twist of luck that had set him down here and as to the people who, presumably, were to be his future companions.

“Perhaps the stout little heart quivered just a bit, if memory went back to his home kennel and to the rowdy throng of brothers and sisters and, most of all, to the soft furry mother against whose side he had nestled every night since he was born. But if so, Lad was too valiant to show homesickness by so much as a whimper. And, assuredly, this House of Peace was infinitely better than the miserable crate wherein he had spent twenty horrible and jouncing and smelly and noisy hours.

“From one to another of the group strayed thelevel sorrowful gaze. After the swift inspection Laddie’s eyes rest again on the Mistress. For an instant, he stood, looking at her, in that mildly polite curiosity which held no hint of personal interest.

“Then, all at once, his plumy tail began to wave. Into his sad eyes sprang a flicker of warm friendliness. Unbidden—oblivious of everyone else—he trotted across to where the Mistress sat. He put one tiny white paw in her lap and stood thus, looking up lovingly into her face, tail awave, eyes shining.

“‘There’s no question whose dog he’s going to be,’ laughed the Master. ‘He’s elected you—by acclamation.’”

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